Year of the Snake 🐍

My software engineering career has not been straightforward. I didn’t study computer science or any STEM subject at university. In fact, I’m very much a humanities graduate, having studied Arabic and Persian for my undergrad and medieval studies for my Master’s.

Like many people, I started to learn to program during lockdown, when the industry was at a high, and there was a promise of lots of jobs and excellent remuneration. I also thought it could be a great use of my analytical skills, and ability to translate strange characters (by this point I had acquired Hebrew on top of my Arabic and Persian). I took a bootcamp, learning JavaScript and Java, which led to a placement as a junior engineer with the largest tech consultancy firm in the world. Unfortunately, this coincided with a downtick in the industry, and I and several others from the bootcamp were made redundant.

I used the opportunity to take a break after over two years of constant working and studying (before the bootcamp, I had been working full time at a call centre and studying nightly to bridge the gap between humanities and STEM). After the break, I was offered a sponsored place on another bootcamp, this time learning Node in place of Java. I learned so much more on that second bootcamp, primarily because I was a lot more used to programming and more au fait with many of the topics that had gone straight over my head during the first course.

From there, I went straight into a role as a junior developer at a start-up in London. What I’m going to say next will sound quite negative but it’s true: I didn’t receive the support I needed as a junior developer in that role. The tiny engineering team (two juniors and a senior) was very much an afterthought in the company, and although I got on really well with the senior developer (who was my manager), he was never able to dedicate time to helping me progress, despite many promises to do so.

I remember feeling so envious of my friends from the (second) bootcamp when they talked about the support they were getting as junior devs, and just the fact that they had actual sprints in their respective companies. Eventually, my role seemed to devolve into very basic frontend changes, like adjusting the width of elements and changing font boldness. By that time, I had become disillusioned with software engineering.

Perhaps I should’ve looked for another dev job, but I felt depleted and really unconfident in my programming skills. Instead, I got a job as a civil servant. Believe it or not, I am better paid and have actual benefits (again, not something I had in the last job) like a health care plan, a cycle to work scheme, not to mention a 28.97% employer contribution rate for my pension!

So, what’s the problem? An itch.

After a few months plodding along with my new job, cycling to work, enjoying having teammates, getting fillings in my teeth (thanks health plan!), etc. I found that the work was becoming a bit dull. I am the sort of person who actually enjoys studying: it’s like my hobby. And suddenly, I had nothing to study. On top of that, I identified a key process at work that could be automated with programming. I started to think a lot about how I would do it.

My first instinct was to use Java, but I had heard previously that Python was good for automating processes, and I thought “maybe I should learn Python”. I remembered I’d purchased a Udemy course back in 2022 that I literally never even looked at: 100 Days of Python. It turns out, it’s one of the highest rated Python courses online, so I started working through it.

Recently, I took a break from Udemy to work through ZTM’s Automate Python course. It’s been really great to work on projects with actual real-world value, rather than just “let’s make hangman” or noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe), but I will definitely be going back to the 100 Days course as I enjoy the manageable daily chunks of learning, and there is some exciting content coming up.

And that’s essentially where I’m at. It’s taken me a bit of time to write this first blog post, but I’ve been studying consistently since the end of January. I’m trying to learn new and useful things, this time around, rather than sticking to comfortable topics. I want to better understand topics like CI/CD, version control, deployment, architecture, machine learning etc. so that I can move forward in my career and truly grow as a software engineer.

Yes, I hope to get a new job in the industry- eventually. First, I want to build some of my own projects: I neglected personal projects whilst working as a dev because I was always too tired once the working day was done. My partner (who works in VFX) is keen for us to build a game together, so that’s something I’m really looking forward to, on top of writing some scripts to automate processes in my current role. I’m personally interested in fintech, so I’d love to build something relating to that, perhaps using machine learning or data science (topics I’ve traditionally shied away from but have recently started to explore- progress, eh!).

The best bit is, I really like Python. I like the ecosystem, and the sorts of applications it has. I’m so excited to keep learning, and hopefully to be able to use it in my day job once again! Bring on the year of the 🐍!!!